Author: Sankarshan Thakur
Publisher: Picador India
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0330447300
Description
India has not seen a politician quite like Laloo Yadav. A mesmerizing bundle of odds –hero to some, villain to others, a self-fashioned champion of the underdog and yet more imperious than then the most well-heeled feudal. Charming and ruthless by turns, Laloo Yadav has repeatedly defied predictions of doom. He is not finished still with the business of leaving his imprint on politics and society.
Here, for the first time, is the fascinating story of Laloo Yadav and his helmsmanship of Bihar, a state different from any other in the object acceptance of its wretchedness. A brilliant account seen through Sankarshan Thakur’s unsparing journalistic eye. This is neither a hatchet job nor a hagiography; it is a plain tale of a complex populist and what his brand of politics does to people.
REVIEWS
In terms of its revealing thoroughness, this is a tour de force of reportorial writing. No one has achieved this degree of critical sensitivity in defining Laloo Yadav
-Prof Walter Hauser
Blazing prose, a saga of Bihar’s despair. His story is not funny. In its sheer ordinariness it is terrifying.
-Prem Shankar Jha
This book is one of the few good results of Laloo’s betrayal of Bihar. A frightening and dispassionate description.
-Vijay Nambisan
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Laloo Yadav: A chronology
Foreword
Snapshots from a Promised Hell
I am the State
The Rancid Cradle
King’s Courtier
King Himself
Charvaha in a Chopper
Flying Higher
Fodder and Fall
The Bonfire of Promises
Social Injustice
The Company that Kept Him
Myths to Die by
Author’s Note
INDEX